What a crying shame the new ‘Building Australia Fund’ wasn’t called the ‘Building a Sustainable Australia Fund’.

What an absolute pity this budget has cemented, presumably for the life of the Rudd government, the same old maximum-expansion antisustainability paradigm.

Somewhere along the line we have got to wean ourselves off of the absurdity of having our whole society premised on a rapidly increasing population and economic turnover. It should have happened at the start of the Howard era, if not earlier. We sure as hell cannot wait for it to happen with the next new government.

“In sum, this is an appropriate Budget for challenging economic circumstances.”

Sorry Saul, this time I have to emphatically disagree with you.

You can just hear the CFMEU and the ETU rubbing their hands together with glee at the notion of the Building Australia Fund... Talk about pork barrelling to your constituents!

That's just a simple example of how skewed this budget is to keeping the "core" Labor group happy.

This fund, that fund... Blank cheques anyone?

US, BN.

These 'funds' may well be used as slush funds. We don't know yet. The fact of the matter is, they couldn't be spent now, as massive infrastructure projects would put further pressure on inflation, and tax cuts would do the same.

They couldn't spend the cash now. At least, they can wait until the economy slows, and there will be cash to hand. In fact, these funds can be used to kickstart the economy, in a similar manner that war manufacturing and infrastructure projects lifted the US out of the great depression.

So to fault the government for making these funds, in my opinion, is foolish - it was very clearly the most responsible thing to do, given the circumstances.

But only time will tell as to whether it is used responsibly.

I don't know Saul's history, but it's hard to know what rock or large wad of cash he was living under while producing this analysis.

This budget is anything but appropriate: the single most urgent priority facing our country, and indeed the world, has been swept under the carpet yet again, and again after a slew of rhetoric about how important the issue really is. Climate change and the solutions thereof have received a pittance of funding, 40 times less than the defense budget. Meanwhile subsidies for the cause of the problem, fossil fuels, remain far higher than those for renewable energy.

A CSIRO report from 20 years ago found that renewable energy technologies could power all of Australia for little extra cost. That was 20 years ago. Prices are now at the point where if the subsidies going to fossil fuels were removed they'd be equivalent in price, let alone if the subsidies were switched to renewable technologies. And more over, if Australia took this path we could be a significant exporter in the increasingly lucrative renewable energy industry, rather than the irresponsible and inevitably doomed coal export industry.

All in all this budgets lack of vision and topsy-turvy priorities is not only inappropriate and economically bad for us in the long run, it's incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.

Oliver, it certainly is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.

The need to switch to renewable energy sources is of the UTMOST importance. Not for climate-change reasons, but for something much more urgent; preventing a massive upheaval in our society due to changing economics as one of our most fundamental resources rapidly and continuously increases in price and takes the price just about everything else up with it.

Our dependence on oil and hence our vulnerability to its ever-rising price should be Rudd’s number one priority.

Nothing is having a greater impact on inflation and soon; rising unemployment.

And yet, I heard not a mention of peak oil, or the energy crunch, in anything to do with the budget….from either side of politics.

All I heard was Nelson’s desire to reduce fuel excise by 13%, in order to make fuel more affordable by about 5 cents a litre, and his strong criticism of Swan for not having done so!

Talk about hopeless!

TRTL, good explanation. Thanks.

The future of Australia I ask.. Is is not with our youth? Then I ask.. Why are we encouraging the lowest common denominator to breed with a means tested Baby Bonus? I hear of many stories of how the the baby bonus can be spent on a new Plasma TV or other inflationary type expenditure.

I suggest it be more fiscally responsible for it to be in the form of a tax rebate and encourage the "contributing" tax paying members of our society with less social problems to "create" the youth of our future?

Col Rouge has a new moniker.

The baby bonus and Family Benefit Part B are welfare payments. If families with incomes of $150,000 can't manage then perhaps they should go to a Centrelink financial planner to learn how to budget, or ask any unemployed person on a Newstart Allowance to review their expenditures to see where they could trim their spending. If dealing with dole bludgers doesn't appeal then perhaps they can deal with carers or aged pensioners.

I hope that Australian politicians start planning for Australia's future rather than run around lining up their Macquarie Bank consultancy to increase their own wealth

At $200 per barrel by 2009, OIL will prove this budget to be Rudd's folly.

All the future-fund $Billions stashed in foreign investments will sail down the Swanny in elaborate US Ponzi schemes involving among other things the new 'subprime' - wind farms. Australians will be left high and dry. How can Rudd be so bloody naive.

Given the recent trend in oil prices the budget should have reflected the following countermeasures:

1. SPEND the surplus on needed infrastructure IMMEDIATELY. The targets have been identified for years. No need to hoarde. That's pure stupidity as time will tell.

2. CUT IMMIGRATION to zero. There is no point having extra workers with oil at $200 per barrel. They will be idle as the economy will permanently downturn. And Rudd's wet dream of 10% GST collection on everything the 1,400,000 or so immigrants expected over the next 3 years of his government? At $200 per oil barrel, global currencies will be so deflated that Rudd will have to raise GST to around %30% to cope with the onerous immigrant burden he is creating for all of US. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if people talk of lynching. God knows they'll have plenty of time to discuss it sitting in biodeisel laced traffic jams right across every capital city.
And another thing, the mining industry needs about 2000 extra workers. What the hell are the other 170,000 skjilled migrant intake going to be doing? Driving up house prices & rents to the benefit of all those vested interest MPs who have big property portfolios.

3. Invest a substantial proportion of the surplus in finalising the GEOTHERMAL pilot plant in the Hunter. GEOTHERMAL is the ONLY replacement energy source for OIL that nature has availed us. Every other source in some way or another is CRITICALLY dependent on oil or coal for its sustainability. Further future fund allocations should invest in GEOTHERMAL as a PRIORITY depending on the outcome of the Hunter pilot.

Budget this Mr Rudd ... keep watching those oil prices .... by 2009 you're finished!

Thatcher,you speak he truth,but neither of the political parties will go there.

Saul, I share your hope that the Rudd Government will be willing to spend political capital more adventurously in the two Budgets before the next election.

In a period of skills shortages and high employment, Rudd should have used the budget as a golden opportunity to re-structure government with new, more efficient delivery mechanisms, replacing the woeful delivery of public services and infrastructure by the states.

The removal of the Medicare surcharge will see hundreds of thousands of people dropping out of Private Health insurance. This will place an unsustainable extra burden on the state public hospital systems that they are simply unable to cope with given their current woes.

Part of Rudd's budget package should have been to start implementing structural change by providing for the gradual transfer of the management and ownership of state public hospitals to Commonwealth control. Only then can Rudd complete a 'roots and branch' reform to this key service sector. But why stop there?

Massive efficiency gains of $30 Billion a year are possible when Australia has completed the total transition to a two tier system of government comprising local government and the Australian government.

Local government has the capacity to deliver high quality services including national health, police, justice, education, environment, and transport programs that also meet local and regional needs and priorities.

The state parliaments and their large civil services are the middlemen of Australian politics. Their greatest service to Australia could be to facilitate the transfer of their powers and assets to the Commonwealth Parliament so that we can achieve a globally efficient country that provides maximum regulatory consistency and value for each tax dollar spent on public goods and services. I hope we get there by 2030.

Billie “Col Rouge has a new moniker.”

Not me.

I would suggest, on the basis of a single post, possibly a troll

but the reasoning, as you will have appreciated, billie is quite sound, very untrollish.

Thatcher is suggesting those who are responsible and capable, shoulder the greater responsibility for procreation, rather than leaving it to the unmarried socialist swill to fornicate indiscriminately, using the science of “random probability” to produce offspring which they do not care for and thus, leave as an unfair burden on the shoulders of real people and ensuring Bob Hawkes declaration “No child will live in poverty. . ” remains one of the greatest lies of the 20th century.

Maybe we will see more of thatcher in the future, who knows but whatever is written under that moniker, GY is able to confirm, does not originate from my keyboard.

As for this budget, higher taxes, lower aspirations, more lies and a recession eclipsing what was a rosy future under the coalition.
I knew it would happen.
I am surprised it happened so quickly but as Keating said “we have to have one” (recession that is) – because that is all the socialists can produce.